MTV Multiplayer › Wii Software Stats

How long do people play the Wii games they buy and rent? Here's the March update, which, as always, includes some crazy stats about how many hours people are -- or aren't -- logging with Wii games. Read More...

How long do people play the Wii games they buy and rent? Here's the February update, which, as always, includes some crazy stats. Read More...

I've learned the following things from my crunching of more than 1.6 million Wii owners' gameplaying habits of 41 Wii games this month:

*"Animal Crossing: City Folk" owners are indeed hardcore -- they played that game, on average, almost 10 hours of the game in December, the most intense game-binging I've seen since I started making these posts!

*The 2007-2008 Wii light-gun gaming renaissance was a bust. Not only did people barely touch their light-gun games, but they touched the "Zelda"-branded one the least.

*"Wii Play" continues to defy the critics, by actually getting played -- a lot.

These are just some of the discoveries in MTV Multiplayer's fifth monthly breakdown of Wii software usage stats. Remember! I'm not tracking sales. I'm tracking how much time the people who play and rent these games actually play them. Any game can sell. But only good games get played.

Check out the usage stats for 41 Wii games: Read More...

Things I've learned this month:

*People who bought or rented "Wii Music," on average, played it several hours less since launch those who have played Wii versions of "Call of Duty," "Guitar Hero," and "Animal Crossing" -- three games that came out weeks after Nintendo's musical game. Problem?

*In November 2008, the most fervently played game on the Wii among a population of 1.4 million possible Wii owners was... "Madden All-Play 09," logging almost three hours of play time per person. That crushes average playing time stats in the same month for "Smash Brothers," "Rock Band" and "Mario Kart."

*"World of Goo" racked up at least 9,300 non-pirated copies sold to those 1.4 million Wii owners in November. Take that, pirates!

These are just some of the discoveries in our fourth number-filled breakdown of Wii software usage stats. We're dong this monthly and we can pull numbers for (almost) any Wii game that's been out for at least a month. Who needs NPDs? And who needs exit poll numbers?

See below to learn a LOT about the performance of 33 Wii games, including new entries for the mighty "Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess," the surprising "My Pokemon Ranch" and the statistically scary "Wario Land: Shake It."

Remember! I'm not tracking sales. I'm tracking how much time the people who play and rent these games actually play them. See it all for yourself:

Read More...

Stop arguing about video game sales figures, my friends.

Let's argue about Wii gaming stats.

Let's argue about how much time people play the games they rent and buy, to find out what's in heavy rotation and what sits untouched in its case.

How much more popular is "Super Smash Bros." than "Mario Kart Wii"? Do people really play "Wii Fit" very much after they buy it? Does anyone play "Metroid Prime 3" and "Okami" anymore?

Those and many other answers are in the numbers below.

Before we get to the fun numbers -- and there's plenty of them below! -- I need to provide some background. Otherwise you might think I made these stats up. Read More...